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Our Fantasy Premier League expert offers his Gameweek 36 advice - covering differentials, Cole Palmer’s form and Brentford bargains.
The Fantasy Premier League season is finally nearing its end – after 10 months of transfers, chips and likely frustration, our mini-leagues are just three weeks away from being decided and every last decision counts. Fortunately, we have an FPL expert on the books to help you make the right moves.
Before we hand you over to Matthew to impart the wisdom that propelled him to a Top 2,000 finish last year – and get his thoughts on signing Erling Haaland - we’re happy to inform you that you all get a bit of extra thinking time this week. The deadline is on Saturday 10 May at 13:30 BST, with no Friday or early kick-offs to hurry you all up. Anyway, over to our man with an FPL plan…
Why Brentford players make ideal differentials for the final weeks
With so little time left before the end of the season (and no more irritating blanks or double gameweeks left to navigate), I thought it was time to devote a little time to the subject of differentials – and in particular, why Brentford players might be the perfect buys for the final weeks of the FPL campaign.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, ‘differentials’ are simply players you own or transfer in who aren’t owned by the players you are directly competing with. The chances are, for instance, that most players in your school and work mini-leagues have Mohamed Salah or Alexander Isak on their books – meaning that no matter how well (or badly) they play, you can’t gain an advantage or lose any ground based on your rivals due to their performances.
At this point of the season, your transfer decisions should be based not only on how likely any given player is to score points, but on how they affect your chances of achieving your aims, whether that’s winning a mini-leagues, breaking the Top 10,000, or anything else.
Put simply, if you’re playing catch-up, you need to sell players that the players ahead of you have and buy players not in their team. If they have Salah, you should consider selling Salah and gambling on, say, Cole Palmer, because if Salah scores a load of goals you still wouldn’t get any closer to overhauling your rival.
If, on the other hand, you’re leading your league and looking to ward rivals off, you want as many players that those in the chasing pack have as possible. If they all have Bukayo Saka, sign Saka, and don’t sell players widely owned by the people who could catch you up – as long as you have the same players, you can’t lose ground on their performances.
With all that in mind, how do you decide which less widely-owned players to purchase? Form, of course, matters, but don’t just look at individual form but at team form – which often matters much more towards the end of the season.
Remember, half of the league is battling hard for European placings, and the other half is basically on the beach already, which often skews the output of otherwise reliable players. Take Nottingham Forest, for instance. No matter how good they’ve been all season, they’re struggling now crunch time is upon us, winning just one in five. I don’t want to sign their assets based on that form, even if they were great gets earlier in the year.
Instead, I’m looking at teams like Brentford, who are in great shape and have won three on the trot, as well as having relatively gentle fixtures. Bryan Mbeumo is a must if he isn’t widely-owned in your league, of course, but Yoane Wissa and Kevin Schade are in great touch and are cheap enablers who could easily not be widely-owned in your leagues.
I don’t mind buying Brentford defenders, either, given their form – they’ve only kept two clean sheets in six games, but their games have been pretty tough and other sides whose cheaper defensive assets might appeal based on fixture difficulty (such as Chelsea and Everton) are keeping even fewer clean sheets.
Manchester City offer answers as Cole Palmer gets back to his best
If you do have to jettison Salah, I really do like gambling on Palmer based on his ceiling and the way that he played at Anfield last weekend, and Chelsea have won several games running which I think will normally outweigh their trickier fixtures.
Basing a big-money transfer decision on one good game is arguably a dicey proposition, but we’re in a part of the season when we don’t have the luxury of waiting for a more significant sample size. If you have a lot of catching up to do and the players ahead of you have Salah, it’s time to move on.
Saka is a great alternative, but Arsenal have been iffy of late as injuries and end-of-season tiredness takes hold. Saka himself, admittedly, has been just fine, and I don’t blame anyone for swinging that way instead of heading for Palmer, especially given that Arsenal’s league form could recover with the Champions League final no longer a consideration.
Ultimately, I prefer Palmer on an instinctual basis, but the decision point is simply whether the players you’re hunting down have one or the other. If you’re behind and your opponents are zigging, you are compelled to zag.
Selling Salah (or Isak or another high-end, widely-owned player) may feel too rich for some players’ blood, but unless the points margin you need to make up is very small it only makes sense to swing for the fences. This is where gambling is a necessity, not a choice, and you can’t stick to the template unless you’re the player in the lead.
In terms of other players and teams worth mentioning, Wolves are red hot, too, so their high-scoring assets have a lot of appeal, while another team I want to make sure I have some players from is Manchester City. After a ropey campaign, they’ve won four on the bounce, they have pretty kind games to close out the season, and I love their defenders and perhaps Kevin de Bruyne given that he seems determine to end his career at the Etihad with a bang.
Then, there’s the fact that Erling Haaland may be back, and that deserves a detailed discussion all of its own… One which I will have in a stand-alone article to be released on 3 Added Minutes on Friday, just before lunchtime. Given that we’re waiting on news of his fitness anyway, it’s one I decided to go into detail on instead of trying to squeeze in here.
Your call on the captaincy this week should also be based on whether you need differentials or not: If you’re ahead, you can keep it simple and pick Salah or Mbeumo. If you’re behind, take a punt, perhaps a player like De Bruyne or Matheus Cunha. You still want a player with a high ceiling, of course, just one that your immediate rivals either don’t have or are highly unlikely to give the armband to.
That’s all for this week – hopefully this will help a lot of players understand how to get closer to the bragging rights or cold hard cash that await FPL mini-league champions over the final few weeks. Best of luck to all of you. We’re nearly there…
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